One is like a snake in your eyes and a lover in another’s. If the wheel of my existence falls from circulation, make me the one who turns the wheel. — Maulana Jallaludin Balkhi --------- The cycle of life begins with pain and ends with pain. If we observe, every cycle begins and ends in a similar fashion: from emptiness to emptiness. Each cycle is an opportunity to embrace the unknown with curiosity, and between cycles, we learn how to embrace each change and let it go when the cycle is complete. The beginning may have already passed while the end has yet to come. But, sometimes and under some circumstances, we seem fixed in the past whilst expecting too much from the future. Finally, when change arrives and we freeze at that closed door, we become oblivious to the other door that opens instead. Meanwhile, those who keep their mind in the present make all sorts of excuses to give up. However, again the mind that fixes itself on that one door may be suspect of its situation or its surrounding figures. How can a dog become an enemy of the boar but a friend of a hunter? How can one side of the world take the magpie as a sign of bad fortune whilst the other sees it as a sign of luck? If you believe in something, you should believe in it with all its challenges. How can you love the rose but hate its thorns? How can you live without embracing the happiness and the suffering inside? Amin Taasha Yogyakarta, April 19, 2024